Voiceofreason01:/The attitude that it's OK to classify basic operational information about the US Government or to classify something simply because it might make the USA look bad(and then exempt said info from the FOIA on national defense grounds) is a problem.

The FBI had an opening for an assassin. After all the background checks, interviews and testing were done, there were 3 finalists. For the final test, the FBI agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. 'We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances.'

Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair . . . Kill her!!' The man said, 'You can't be serious. I could never shoot my wife.' The agent said, 'Then you're not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home.'

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes. The man came out with tears in his eyes, 'I tried, but I can't kill my wife.' The agent said, 'You don't have what it takes. Take your wife home.'

Finally, the last man was given the same instructions, to kill his wife. He took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the man, wiping the sweat from his brow. 'Some idiot loaded the gun with blanks' he said. 'I had to strangle the biatch to death'.

To anyone saying he did not screen it properly; he could not do that and have the same impact. The whole point of what he did was to expose the fact that everything is being placed behind the wall of secrecy without any good reason. We, as American people, are being denied even the most basic information in an unfiltered form. The only actual info we get has been put through so many spin cycles that what comes out has as much in common with the facts as orange soda does to an orange. In order to expose the ridiculousness of the situation he had to put it all out there. Notice how there were no lives lost when 30K+ documents were released in bulk. We had no significant set-backs in our military or diplomatic apparatus reported upon, which I am sure would have been trumpeted had that been the case.

What you are left with is the argument that he could have caused significant harm. Speeding could cause significant harm and cost a lot of lives in the wrong scenario. People are made to pay a fine and at worst perform community service. Drunk driving might result in a few weekends in jail. Both of those crimes have the potential for significant harm, but carry with them much lighter sentences. A multi-car wreck can result in half a dozen fatalities. That handful of lives lost is a tragedy and yet for the punishment people are given next to nothing in relative comparison to what Bradley Manning got. Justice must be blind, impartial and even handed in order for it to be just. He had no malice of intent and there was no actual harm. His motives seemed noble even if his actions were illegal. To me, in my understanding of things, those factors deserve heavy consideration when determining sentence. He did deserve to be found guilty, however being the liberal that I am, I think sentencing him to time served + 1000 hours of community service would have sufficed.

Yes, he broke the law... however the law was being used in such a way so as to arguably circumvent first amendment. By putting everything done behind the wall of secrecy you deny the press the ability to do it's job. Essentially, you elect to spoon feed to choice organizations the cherry picked information you want them to have, and to hell with the rest. No one can take the time to sift through documents because there are no documents through which to sift. You use one law to basically render an amendment to the constitution impotent. It is only in abstract these days, but the constitution ought to be considered the highest law of the land and be used as the guide for setting all other laws. It is impractical, inefficient and more prone to creating conflict between government and citizenry; but it is also the best way to keep a country free from government over-reach. At this point in our history it is an idealized notion... something antiquated and only paid lip service to. I know this, I understand this. I am a realist about it. It still hurts and angers me on some fundamental level when I see such blatant examples of it. It goes even deeper when I see so many of my fellow citizens defend something so against the spirit of our nation. Eh, but what do I know?

vygramul:Voiceofreason01: /The attitude that it's OK to classify basic operational information about the US Government or to classify something simply because it might make the USA look bad(and then exempt said info from the FOIA on national defense grounds) is a problem.

FTA: "The 1,182 days he has spent in confinement since he was arrested in May 2010 will be applied toward his term. Added to the military's extensive credits for good behavior, Manning could be eligible for parole in about 8 years, when he is 33."

mechgreg:what kind of crappy computer system does the US Army have where it allows someone to bring a writable CD to their computer which is used for military intelligence and start burning stuff onto it without any kind of checking or alarm going off?

that depends on his access level. if his access level allowed him to do this, no alarm bells would go off. if joe blow with low level clearance tried to fire up the burner, there might be a different reaction.

Voiceofreason01:Carth: Voiceofreason01: vygramul:Had he simply released stuff that concerned him, I could have written it off as misguided at worst. Dumping 250k documents without knowing the contents thereof is not exposing shady shiat. It's showing depraved indifference.

So how do you feel about the Defense Department classifying all of those documents and exempting them from the FOIA without regards to their contents?

We desperately need to reform how we classify data right now it is expensive and a pain in the butt for employees as well. Good luck getting the billions of dollars needed to revamp the IT infrastructure and clearance processes though since most politicians don't think it is much of a problem.

because if there's one arm of the US Government that's chronically underfunded it's the Department of Defense.

/The attitude that it's OK to classify basic operational information about the US Government or to classify something simply because it might make the USA look bad(and then exempt said info from the FOIA on national defense grounds) is a problem.

You'd need to update at hell of a lot more than the Department of Defense. CIA, DoE, DoJ, DHS, DoS Treasury and about two dozen other departments all produce and consume classified data and would need to be included in changes.

Lady J:Felgraf: Lady J: so if you have evidence that your employer breaks the law, but you've signed a contract keeping everything you see at work secret, what are you supposed to do?

Among other things, release only the stuff pertinent to him breaking the law?

Again. He released a lot of shiat *that did not have to do with US wrongdoing*. Things that contained, *unredacted*, the names of, say, informants who were tipping off the US to terror plots.

shiat that you kind of want to keep secret to keep *folks, and their families from getting murdered*.

also. do you think if he had only released those documents pertinent to US wrongdoing he'd be a free man right now?

im genuinely asking.

I honestly don't know. They would not have been able to try him on *nearly* as many counts as they did, at the very least. Even if he were not a free man, I *could* say with confidence that his sentence would be shorter.

I cannot say for sure if he would be a free man or not, though. I vaguely recall hearing they *didn't* charge him with the bits that could have/were actual whistleblowing-but that could be me misremembering. Even if I'm *not* misremembering, it doesn't mean they wouldn't have charged him with that if it was the only thing he'd released. I do not have a ball that lets me peek into alternate universes, so I do not generally like to state with confidence what would have happened in alternate timelines.

so is it the case that the people who shout loudest about the right to bear arms to protect themselves against the government and their sneaky ways, are the least likely to ever actually question the government's sneaky ways

Voiceofreason01:vygramul:But that's not the point. I can put my skid-marked tighty-whities in a safe. That doesn't mean that some guy cracking into my safe is now innocent of a crime.

And Manning should be punished for committing the crime but there needs to be an discussion about the underlying issues i.e. why you're stealing people's dirty underwear and locking them up in a safe.

Again, can somebody cite a single specific example of what was supposedly wrong about the classification of the documents Manning released? I went to Wikileaks and read some of the unclassified documents. One was about sending F-14s to Iran in the early '70s. A sensitive topic we rightly wanted to keep confidential at the time, but properly declassified later. All the reports I read after the mass release were about similarly sensitive discussions of State Department actions and policy.

BTW, if you think the release of diplomatic cables involves DOD security policy, then you're too dumb to join the conversation. Manning had access to State Department files, which made up much of the data dump. The rest were mostly reports from lower-level commanders, which some claimed contradicted the strategic-level statements of the administration, but that hardly constitutes a crime.

bdub77:I can't help but feel a little sad about the whole thing. Our government is doing a lot of shady sh*t and these guys are exposing them for it, and this is what they get for it.

There isn't even a way to expose the government now for all this secret sh*t without being labeled a terrorist or traitor.

(with a sigh)....Sorry bdub, but that ship sailed several years ago. I suggest you pick up a copy of "The Prince." Even though it was written 500 years ago, it's an extraordinary blueprint for keeping the population in check.

gaslight:A legal system that doesn't distinguish between leaks to the press in the public interest and treason against the nation will not only produce unjust results, but will deprive the public of critical information that is necessary for democratic accountability. This is a sad day for Bradley Manning, but it's also a sad day for all Americans who depend on brave whistleblowers and a free press for a fully informed public debate.

An ironic statement, because Manning's prison sentence is evidence that the government did exactly that: properly distinguish between good and bad leaks. And it made it unambiguously clear that indiscriminately dumping hundreds of thousands of documents on Julian Assange falls squarely on the bad side.

When I was active duty with a security clearance part of my job consisted looking at country assessments before port visits. A sentence that says "There is a chance of Al Qaeda cells could be active in [some generic country]" could basically turn a basic tourism brochure into a Secret document. NCIS who did the reports were notorious for doing this. No sources or methods were described (I was a shipboard Crypto tech)

Tigger:freak7: elffster: freak7: make me some tea: Damn. I can't even crack a joke about that.

I can, screw the traitor.

So....telling folks about war crimes that US troops commit is bad...right, gotcha.

Moran.

War crimes? Don't blame the troops for a couple stupid journalists who thought it would be cool to walk around a combat zone with dudes carrying rifles and rpg's. As for the children in the van, blame the dummy who brought his kids along to evacuate shot up terrorists.

The previous administration admitted to war crimes publicly.

Now you might think that they are little war crimes and that they don't matter and it was worth it and so on. That's a perfectly acceptable point of view. But at least have the strength of character to own that point of view rather than pretending that there weren't any. It just makes you look weak.

Manning leaked the video of the Apache attack which Wikipedia then titled "collateral murder". That's what's being talked about here.

FrankenPC:I sincerely everyone keeps this in mind: The courts didn't throw Manning in jail. They threw US in jail. You see, no one really cares what happens to one individual. But they do want to make damn sure there are no copycats out there. So, the 35 years behind bars thing is a message TO US. SUBMIT, DON'T QUESTION, WE HAVE EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL, IF YOU DON'T COMPLY, THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU.

Yes. I believe this is exactly what you sign up for when you enlist. In any military, at any time, anywhere in the world. This is not a secret.

Voiceofreason01:vygramul: Voiceofreason01: /The attitude that it's OK to classify basic operational information about the US Government or to classify something simply because it might make the USA look bad(and then exempt said info from the FOIA on national defense grounds) is a problem.

Yes. But it's also an unsolvable one.

why

It's way too complex a problem. First, consider the information itself. Sometimes something that has no significance in and of itself, but the nature of how we must have arrived at the information, or the fact that we know it (or knew it since time x) would be a big reveal in and of itself. Take, for example, CLASSIFIED: TOP SECRET! "Harry likes red socks, even though he can never find an appropriate time to wear them." Now, that seems silly and trite, unless Harry, China's finance minister, only told his secretary that. So it turns out his secretary is in our pocket. And the information might turn out useful to know if it turns out he likes them so much he can be bribed with red socks. (I'm picking something deliberately absurd to illustrate the point.)

Now, it'd be stupid to attach how we know each piece of information to every classified document. In fact, we intentionally don't. As an analyst, it was useful for me to know what frequencies would mean which Russian sub. But knowing who got us that information or which sensor is usually unimportant.

That's just the first problem. The discretion and context makes it impossible for a dispassionate third party to judge a given piece of information.

The second problem is that the people in charge of fixing this will be operating with the same set of incentives the people currently doing the classification have. They'll end up classifying all the same things for all the same reasons - expediency, uncertainty, and embarrassment. Only with maybe a different proportion.

Carth: Lady J: Felgraf: Lady J: so if you have evidence that your employer breaks the law, but you've signed a contract keeping everything you see at work secret, what are you supposed to do?

Among other things, release only the stuff pertinent to him breaking the law?

Again. He released a lot of shiat *that did not have to do with US wrongdoing*. Things that contained, *unredacted*, the names of, say, informants who were tipping off the US to terror plots.

shiat that you kind of want to keep secret to keep *folks, and their families from getting murdered*.

so is there going to be a similar trial of those repsonsible for the 'US wrongdoing'?

Sure, other countries can hold whatever trial they want and put "the US" on trial for its wrongdoings.

Sovereignty how does it work?

I don't know. how does it work in this context?

so are you saying that if he did leak evidence of war crimes, no one in the US would bring anyone in the US to trial? it's up to, I don't know... sweden to do it?

If he did leak irrefutable proof of "US" war crimes any country (Sweden, China, Russia, North Korea), the ICCt or the UNSC (but the US would obviously veto any attempt there) could put the US on trial. I put US in quotes because generally you need a person who ordered the criminal action to be in court you can't just say "the untied states did it lets try it".

The problem in all these cases is the United States is sovereign country and as such doesn't have to abide by any sentence handed down by another sovereign country and it can refuse hand over anyone convicted by an international court. Sure, Sweden could try Bush, Obama, Cheney or anyone else for war crimes but Obama can just say "sorry we're not giving them to you" and the only recourse they'd have would be to impose trade restrictions, expel our diplomats or something similar.

OK, since none of the Manning supporters seem to know what he actually leaked, here's a synopsis. The attack helicopter video (which Manning's lawyers argued had already been released, so what's the big deal?) War logs from Iraq with names of Iraqis who talked to us, putting their lives in danger. War logs from Afghanistan, with names redacted. Diplomatic cables that often embarrassed foreign governments because their private conversations didn't match their public statements (duh; that's sometimes how diplomacy works).

No war crimes. No evidence of overclassification. The most "damning' claim about the war logs is that they supposedly show a higher level of civilian deaths than the high-level assessments of the war. That claim has never been proven, despite those documents being in the hands of many major news outlets, some antagonistic to the U.S.

mbillips:elffster: freak7: make me some tea: Damn. I can't even crack a joke about that.

I can, screw the traitor.

So....telling folks about war crimes that US troops commit is bad...right, gotcha.

Moran.

What war crimes? None of what Manning released exposed anything illegal. It was just more detailed versions of the battle reports, and a farkton of diplomatic cables. The video of the journalists getting killed by the helo made it clear they thought they were engaging armed baddies.

Also, subby, he's not going to the hole. He's going to gen pop at Leavenworth, which is a hell of a lot safer and more livable than a civilian federal pen.

so is it the case that the people who shout loudest about the right to bear arms to protect themselves against the government and their sneaky ways, are the least likely to ever actually question the government's sneaky ways

Lady J:FrankenPC: I sincerely everyone keeps this in mind: The courts didn't throw Manning in jail. They threw US in jail. You see, no one really cares what happens to one individual. But they do want to make damn sure there are no copycats out there. So, the 35 years behind bars thing is a message TO US. SUBMIT, DON'T QUESTION, WE HAVE EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL, IF YOU DON'T COMPLY, THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU.

im still trying to understand the in's and out's of the whole thing (without making enormous effort, in fairness), but this is definitely true

Look, I'm going to keep this really, really simple:

Part of the oath that Manning took- twice- included the phrase "according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice". He hasn't been punished under Federal, state, or local law. He's being punished under military law, and the rules are different.

To make a freaking extreme example, imagine someone falling asleep at work. Chances are, they'd get a reprimand, maybe even fired. Under the UCMJ, there are certain times (when you're on guard, for example) where the maximum penalty for doing that is death.

If you don't want to risk punishment under the UCMJ, don't join the military. It's pretty simple, really.

He knew he was breaking the law. He knew that exposing top secret material is considered treason. He knew the consequences for exposing those secrets would likely result in a long jail term (at best). He did it anyway. Justice was served.